The present invention relates to a device for feeding articles, particularly adapted for feeding articles to a wrapping or packaging machine. More specifically, the invention relates to a device for the feeding of candies, or similar products, to a wrapping machine, of the type in which the candies are discharged in a disorderly manner on a first disc, or conveyor disc, provided with orderly arranged pockets, into which the said candies are arranged by separating and singularizing means. From the pockets of the conveyor disc the candies are transferred to a second disc, which is also called the feeding disc, since it actually feeds the candies to the wrapping machine. The main problem in this type of feeding devices resides in the fact that while the feeding disc which directly feeds the candies to the wrapping machine can operate at high rotational speeds, such as are the speeds which can be attained by the wrapping machine, the conveyor disc necessarily must operate at lower rotational speeds, since the operation of separating and singularizing the candies delivered thereon necessarily takes more time. Therefore, the speed of the feeding disc, and consequently of the whole feeding device, is dependent and conditioned by the speed attainable by the first disc, or conveyor disc.
Of course, higher operational speeds could be attained by making at least the conveyor disc, on which the articles are separated and singularized, of greater dimensions, but it is evident that this would lead to greater overall dimensions of the feeding device, which are not desirable.
It has been proposed by the device as disclosed in the German Pat. 2 107 744 of Sept. 9, 1971, which is the closest prior art known to the applicants, to provide the conveyor disc with concentric crowns of pockets in which the candies are arranged by the separating and singularizing means. The candies thus arranged are then transferred by an intermediate transfer device, in the form of a drum rotating on a horizontal axis and presenting a number of rows of peripheral transferring pockets corresponding to the number of concentric crowns, to the feeding disc, which receives, at each transferring step of the said drum, a number of candies equal to the number of concentric crowns of the first (conveyor) disc. Practically, however, due to reasons of construction and smooth operation, the number of concentric crowns must be limited to two, and therefore the final feeding speed is necessarily limited.
According to the present invention, the speed of the feeding device is greatly increased, by arranging the pockets on the conveyor disc (on which the candies are separated and singularized) in groups or sets in which the pockets are distributed on arc lengths, the arcs having the same diameter as the crown of receiving pockets on the feeding disc. An intermediate rotary transfer device is provided between the two discs, which transfer device presents a plurality of grippers adapted each to take a group of candies from a set of pockets in the conveyor disc, and transfer them without changing their relative position, directly onto a corresponding arc length of the crown of pockets on the feeding disc.
The above and other features and advantages of the feeding device according to the present invention will appear evident from the following detailed description of some preferred embodiments made with reference to the attached drawings.